Developing Translingual and Transcultural Competence through Pedagogic Subtitling

Abstract

This paper expounds a language pedagogy that is framed within the ecological perspective on language learning elaborated by Leo van Lier (2000 Leo van Lier (2004) and Claire Kramsch (2009 and Claire Kramsch (2010) and adopts Maria Tymoczko’s (2007) holistic approach to cultural translation. Next, I report on a case study where the proposed methodology was integrated in the syllabus design of a 3-credit module I taught as part of a professional development course attended by secondary school EFL teachers at the University of Bari during the 2013-2014 academic year. Students analysed and translated salient scenes from the bilingual drama La stella che non c’è/ The Missing Star (directed by Gianni Amelio, 2006). In so doing, they unveiled the connectedness between language and culture and how they both are “discursively constructed” in social contexts(van Lier, The Ecology 184).